I've bored the readers of my personal website to death with two rather prosaic articles debating the Linux security model, in direct relation to Windows and associated claims of wondrous infections and lacks thereof. However, I haven't yet discussed even a single program that you can use on your Linux machine to gauge your security. For my inaugural article for OSNews, I'll leave the conceptual stuff behind, and focus on specific vectors of security, within the world of reason and moderation that I've created and show you how you can bolster a healthy strategy with some tactical polish, namely software.

"May I remind you that I stated "more secure defaults than Windows" and not that "Linux's defaults are perfect"

They aren't more secure than Windows anymore. At one time, sure. Now? No. "

Depends on how you define it. Windows now is certainly more secure than Windows of the past, but nevertheless the actual infection rate of Windows systems is still vastly more than infection rates of any other system.

It matters not at all to the end user (whose system gets infected) if this is "unfair" comparison, or if it is due to the fact that there is vastly more security threats against Windows. The practical outcome is still that if you run a Windows system, it is far more likely to get infected.